1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to providing telephone services via application software for such services and involves a telephone network digital computer platform for supporting such application software.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A variety of telephone services and enhanced services are currently available such as Call Answer, Call Forward, Voice Store and Forward, Voice Mail, Emergency Number Facilities, Directory Assistance, Operator Assistance, Call Screening, Automatic Wake-up Services, and the like. Generally, such services are provided by dedicated systems specifically designed for the service and for the hardware environment in which the system will be deployed, such single purpose systems providing only the one enhanced service. Such systems tend to lack flexibility in that desired changes in functionality often require extensive, and hence expensive, modifications to the application software. Additionally, application software for providing such services are not portable in that a change in hardware environment usually requires substantial application software rewriting. Although such systems are usually computer based, such systems can only perform the functions for which they were designed and, thus, cannot also be utilized to perform general purpose data processing. Also such systems generally do not have access to data bases stored on general purpose computers. Additionally, if it is desired to provide a wide variety of services, utilization of a large number of dedicated systems tends to be prohibitively expensive.
Systems of the type described above for providing enhanced and new special services are generally used in premises, campus, PBX and PABX environments. Since the divestiture, however, the Bell Operating Companies (BOCs) and Independent Telephone Companies (Telcos) have been seeking ways to increase the return on their primary asset; viz, the installed network. One source of increased revenue would be to offer new services that integrate into, or interface with the existing network, resulting in greater utilization thereof. Prior to the present invention, it has been difficult for BOCs and Telcos to provide new services because network switches are designed to switch calls, not support data base or special service related functionality. Each Central Office (CO) utilizes a predetermined set of functions provided by the switch manufacturer. Only the manufacturer could add new services to the switching system which usually involved substantial lead times, such as two years or more. Additionally, the switch manufacturers have been particularly slow in responding to the needs of the BOCs and Telcos for enhanced service provisioning. Thus, a major limiting factor to providing such new services is a dependence on the telephone switch provider for implementing the capabilities required by these new services.